Sunday, November 23, 2008

You can give a girl a recyclable, reusable grocery bag but you can't make her use it!

So I was driving today to the store cause we were out of milk (for several days) amongst other things, and I was thinking about how when I was growing up in LA, every house was given a cool recycling bin to use. First it was a small yellow bin like this,
that we dragged out and put next to our trash cans. Then they upgraded to a big blue bin that looked more like this.This, along with a green bin for yard trimmings was hauled out to the curb with our trash every week, and 2 trash trucks would come by. One was for trash and one was for all the recyling. Anyway, I was thinking about my recyclable bags in the back of my car on the way to the store. I am all into using them exclusively and getting away from the plastic bags, but what happens? All too often I forget them in the car and I don't remember them until I've already got the girls in the cart and I'm trooping my way through the store. So what do I still have under my sink, despite my best intentions? Oh that would be a pile of bags. So what do those LA bins have in common with my current situation? I think it would be that having the tools at your disposal to be more environmentally conscious doesn't do you any good unless it's also pretty much foolproof and made so that there's very little chance of forgetting about it! I keep my bags in the car, but for me I guess that's not enough, since I am the Goldfish Girl. (Goldfish have a memory span of 3 seconds, and apparently I do too.)

1 comment:

Kathryn said...

Amen! I have tons of those bags and I always forget them. I wish Anchorage had a curbside recycling program because I'm to lazy to haul stuff to the recycling center but if they came and got it, I would set it aside for them.